Rain/Weekend Update
I had a really hard time waking up this morning. Usually, the sun rises around 5:00 (they don’t have daylight savings time here) and by 6:30 there’s so much light in our room it’s impossible for me to stay asleep. This morning, though, it was dark outside when I woke up, I think I pressed my snooze button about 5 times. The wonderful thing, though, is it’s dark because it’s raining! The rainy season here starts in June, and sure enough it’s June 1st and we’re getting rain. Not a lot, but enough to make it wonderfully cool here, a very welcome change in temperature from the 100 degree plus weather we were having last week. All of the locals have been anticipating the rain. The termites wings have all fallen off, which means rain is coming, and last night when I was freaking out because of flying cockroaches (there were about 5 flying around inside of the dining area), the ladies that cook for us were surprisingly excited, “You see the cockroaches? They fly around so much, it means rain will come!” Of course, the flying cockroaches, what else would be a sign for rain?
` This weekend was great, very relaxing and earthquake free. Friday afternoon we took the bus to Belize City, and from there we took a water taxi to Caye Caulker. The Caye was really fun, I got a lot of shopping in, and there were plenty of opportunities to haggle on prices. Hannah helped teach me the art of it. Looking at something for a long time, asking the price, frowning, putting it down, picking it up again. They usually say a lower price, frowning again, keep looking at it, start to walk away, at which point you here a lower price, and then you can usually offer something $5 off of that. For serious, I got a gift for my Mom (not saying what it is, it’s a surprise!), originally $25 Belize Dollars and I got it down to $10 Belize Dollars, I’d never had so much fun shopping.
I also went snorkeling this weekend and it was fantastic. $37 BZ for a three stop trip. Our guide had lived on the island his entire life, so he knew the names of all the fish and coral, and he knew the best spots to see things. Some highlights include: a barracuda, sea anemones, holding a starfish, huge schools of blue tang, coral, and a lobster. The coolest part was our last stop at sting ray alley. We jumped out of the boat (I was the first to get out, so brave) and there were about 25 Southern Sting Rays swimming with us! Some of the biggest ones were 3 feet long. You just stand in the water, and they rub up against you and swim through your legs. They don’t sting unless they feel threatened, their stingers aren’t even exposed, and these were super tame, they get fed fish every day by tourists. It was definitely one of my top 5 coolest experiences yet. One of them even sucked on my foot, I guess he thought I was food.
On Sunday we had an impromptu worship surface on top of the roof of one of our hotels. One of the professors, who’s a Christian, found a guitar and led the service, and about 6 students came, along with one other professor and one of our program coordinators from Peacework who has been living in Dangriga the past few months. It was really great, I think we all felt so worn out with project work and the earthquake, it was really important to meet together and encourage each other.
2 years ago